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Saturday, June 29, 2013

Rocking the early morning (before work) runs

For the past three weeks I have been rocking the "5K at 5am" run routine and loving it. I have to say, I am not and have never been a morning person. A couple weeks ago I got in my head that I needed to shake up my running and workout routine so I decided to try early morning runs (instead of squeezing in a quick workout at lunch).

Here are 5 things that have been helping me with the 5am wakup call and run:
1) Get in the mindset the night before. I still unfortunately work late most nights after the boys are in bed and therefore don't get to sleep until a bit after 11 - working on changing this. Every night, prior to going to bed I remind myself "tomorrow I'm going to get up and run."
2) Set my clothes out outside of our room the night before. Even though I'm enduring the early wakeup call, Matt doesn't want it, so I try to be quiet and get out of the room as quickly as possible.
3) Set an alarm or two. I use two. Oddly, I haven't been woken up by the alarm a single time before my runs in the past couple weeks. I think my body "knows" when it's time to go.
4) Get my shoes on as quickly as possible when I do wake up. If I wake up and dilly, I know it'll be harder to rally.
5) Stretch, enjoy a tea, and enjoy the only 30min of quiet I get of the day as soon as my run is finished. If I'm able to enjoy the post-run solace and cooldown, I know I'll be more likely to go again.

The view on my run has definitely been helping every day. I have been running along a nice stretch in Queen Anne with a view of the Space Needle and the water along almost the entire path. Rad.